Atypical Adoption
by Lucillia
Summary: When's an affair not an affair? When it starts out as a Tenza of course. After a surprisingly young looking Harry Potter deals with Voldemort, events lead him to the Doctor's side and a certain Time Lord finds out that he has a preternaturally intelligent child that has about another fifty years before he hits puberty to deal with.
1. The Adoption

As Harry looked at the pictures in his photo album, he had the feeling that something was wrong, something was off, something to do with the pictures from the months leading up to his birth. First of all, there were no images of his real father who had supposedly been close to the Potters before the betrayal. He'd been told by people who had been close enough to the Potters to know that Lily had cheated on James. Sirius Black had said as much when he'd come to retrieve Pettigrew and netted Ron as well. The fact that he was unnaturally young looking for his age, unnaturally intelligent if scatterbrained and more mechanically inclined than magically inclined, seriously allergic to willow bark and anything derived from it, and had two hearts would've been proof enough of the affair even if he hadn't been told.

In his opinion, it was a pity Snape hadn't been aware of the affair, seeing as it wasn't widely publicized and his messy black hair made him look something like James Potter. Things probably would've been easier for him if he had, since Snape hated James with a passion and would've quite likely gotten a kick out of the fact that he'd been cuckolded, even if it meant that yet another man who wasn't him had gotten Lily.

As Harry flipped through the photo album, he never once noticed the fact that in the photographs taken in the month leading up to his birth Lily hadn't looked the least bit pregnant.

Tenza were good at hiding their true natures, even from themselves...

**July 29, 1980:**

He'd been drifting for ages. That was how it was for the Tenza. They were born in space and remained in hibernation, in near perpetual infancy until they reached a world where there would be someone to raise them as their own. He had made his way to such a world in an egg whose shell was as strong as the hull of a spaceship. A world where the inhabitants were kind and would probably still care for him even if they did know.

His drift slowed as he was caught in orbit around a small blue-green world which was the third planet out from a rather ordinary yellow sun. He went around once, twice, the pleas echoing in his small mind, pleas in a variety of languages, all of which were variants on the theme of "Please God, please just give us a child. One child, that's all we ask.".

He made a decision. Using the psychic powers that were endemic to his species, he sent his egg hurtling to a small island off the coast of Western Europe, though he didn't know it was called such at the time. The shell of his egg protected him from the burning heat of atmospheric entry and absorbed the shock of impact when he landed near the country home of a couple named Harrowgate, cracking open to reveal an unharmed baby Tenza who awaited his new parents for whom he would become the perfect child.

When the Harrowgates who'd rushed outside to see what the matter was touched him, he absorbed their DNA and unconsciously hid the fact that he wasn't theirs from them and himself. The entire process had been instinctive, having been hardwired into his genetic structure, as had the instinct to psychically bond with his parents whom he depended on for survival.

The Harrowgates named him Agustus Alexander.

**July 31, 1980:**

The Harrowgates were on their way to visit Richard's parents when the cloaked and masked figure who had been riding an honest to goodness broom had flown past the car. Wilhelmina who had been holding Agustus for whom they'd yet to get a carseat despite the fact that they'd had seven months' worth of advanced warning had nearly dropped her son in shock.

Three more such figures appeared and soon harried the car off the road and into a ditch.

With a sound like a pair of gunshots help had arrived, but it was far too late...

The Doctor who had been running towards the sound of screeching tires while Jamie trailed in his wake hurried his pace upon hearing what sounded like gunshots but carried the psychic impression of a rapid opening and closing of the space-time vortex in which the TARDIS traveled. All too soon, he found himself running down an embankment towards an overturned automobile which was merrily blazing away like a bonfire while a red-haired woman struggled to pull a bundle of some sort from it. A short distance away, a young man with messy black hair fought several masked and robed figures who hurled psychic attacks at him, hurling back the same in kind.

With a cry of "Creag an tuirc!" Jamie launched himself into battle, going to the dark-haired man's aid. Quite likely because the masked and cloaked figures looked rather sinister, and that type were usually up to no good in such situations. As Jamie joined the fight, the Doctor made his way down to the burning car from which the red-haired woman who was little more than a girl, younger than Jamie even, had pulled a small whimpering bundle which she cradled in her arms.

Examining the baby who seemed to be dying despite the fact that it appeared miraculously uninjured, he quickly realized what had happened even though something seemed to be fighting him the entire way. Something that kept weakly insisting that the baby that the red-haired girl was holding was an ordinary child, each protest of normalcy growing weaker and fainter than the last.

"It's no use." he said. "He psychically bonded himself to his adoptive parents, and the bond was broken far too soon. The backlash from it is killing him."

The girl who was on the verge of tears looked down at the small brown-haired newborn resolutely, much the way Jamie did when he encountered something he wouldn't stand for.

"I-If, if he could bond himself to someone else..." the girl said hesitantly.

"Even if it could work, there's no time." the Doctor replied, guessing at her plan. "Your husband is still busy fighting, as is Jamie."

Pulling a knife out of her sleeve, the red-haired girl cut open her palm and that of the infant.

"In Magic, Flesh, Blood, and Bone, I adopt you as my own." the girl said as she pressed her bleeding hand against that of the infant. There was a bright flash and both her hand and the baby's were healed.

"Would you let a baby die right in front of you if you could do something to help?" the girl asked as she handed him the knife.

Realizing that the answer to the question was "No", he followed the pattern of the ritual which was apparently meant to psychically tie a new parent to a child and alter its genetics, much the way Tenza did following their arrival on the planet on which they would live. A second later, he pulled the girl away as the baby began to glow with a bright golden light.

"_Oh dear_" he said as the baby Regenerated.


	2. The MacGuffin

When one pictures the Defeater of Voldemort, one would more than likely picture someone like Neville Longbottom who had become hardened and battle-scarred in the year leading up to the Battle of Hogwarts as he had protected those amongst the student population who'd fallen out of the favor of Voldemort's enforcers in the castle, not the little shrimp who looked like he was about six or seven and barely came up to Neville's waist. Harry James Potter, recipient of an Order of Merlin First Class and suspected half-breed had been the defeater of Voldemort however, and after he'd defeated Voldemort he'd retreated to the small cottage in the Scottish Highlands which had been left to him by a childless wizard named McCrimmon and did what he did best, tinkering.

The Tenth (technically eleventh) incarnation of the Doctor once joked that his Fifth self could save the universe with "a kettle and a bit of string". The Second incarnation of the Doctor could do it without the kettle. He may have been absolute pants at dealing with logic and numbers when compared to Zoe Heriot and some of his later selves, but if you handed him a space heater and a pile of junk, he could build you a working raygun and then drive off in the rest of the junk while you weren't looking.

It had been the Second Doctor who had adopted Harry in a ritual that gave him half his DNA, and the Second Doctor whom Harry had inherited most of his skills from. Skills that had puzzled the hell out of the people who had administered Harry's last seven I.Q. tests before he went off to Hogwarts since his results were merely average for his age, and the boy didn't appear to be gaming them like some geniuses had a tendency to do.

Sighing and pulling himself out from under the car he was currently restoring, Harry went to the kitchen to make himself lunch in the middle of the afternoon on the twenty-third day after Voldemort's defeat. Food didn't hold the appeal for him it did most others since he was nine, after his aunt Petunia had realized that he'd stopped growing a year or two earlier, figured that it had to do with his usual feeding schedule or lack of one, and started stuffing him full of food until he was sick out of fear that the authorities would realize that she and his uncle Vernon had been mistreating him. He had a few favorite foods that he enjoyed indulging in on occasion, but to him, eating had mostly become something to do to shut his stomach up.

He didn't know why his growth had come to a virtual standstill when he was about seven or eight, but sometimes when he closed his eyes, he dreamed that when he was about that age he'd once seen Everything. The dream that was filled with whispers of "Below average" and "It figures that the Doctor would do something like this completely by accident" was not a pleasant dream, nor were the shadowy half-remembered people in it. Half-remembered people who had seemed to take pleasure in prodding him with sticks as they herded him towards something. Up until Hogwarts, the only dreams he had that were worse than that one was the one where his mother died, and the one with the burning car.

Pushing his dark musings aside as he entered his cottage's small kitchen, he found himself jumping and diving under the table without fully processing why until a second later when he caught a glimpse of a grey cloak. His wand was in his hand before the shadowed face appeared in his line of sight when the figure who had been standing in his kitchen bent down to peer under the table.

"And people wonder why those who know you doubt your courage despite the deeds that prove your bravery." the stranger with the androgynous voice said as it sat down and showed that its hands were empty. "It is a pity that survival instinct is all too often mistaken for cowardice, child."

"I'm not a child!" Harry snapped, his small size and youthful appearance having been a sore point for the last several years, especially with all the girls his age and even some of the girls in the years below him treating him like he was their little brother or something. Not that he was interested, but still...

"As you may have seen during your rather...destructive tour of the facility, not all of the mysteries my department studies are of this Earth. Amongst your father's species you are still very much a child. Eight is near infancy, eighty is a mere youth, and a hundred and twenty is basically the new eighteen." the figure said, sounding amused.

"What do you want?" Harry asked, unhappy with the Unspeakable's confirmation of the fact that he was going to outlive his friends as he'd begun to suspect when he realized that he was still growing a little.

"There is something that needs to be kept out of Voldemort's hands because it was kept out of Voldemort's hands, and we need you to do it." the Unspeakable replied.

"I'd say that what you said doesn't make a lick of sense, but something similar happened to me during Third Year. The question I have is why do you need me?" Harry asked, having parsed the Unspeakable's statement and figured that it involved time travel. Since he'd thought that he was done with the whole Voldemort thing after he'd gone and fulfilled that prophesy, he was none too happy with this development.

"The dangers of apparating beyond a certain distance also apply for any time travel that is beyond a week or so. You however, being what you are, are protected." the Unspeakable replied. "That, and you were seen."

"And if I don't do it?" Harry asked, wanting to stay home, fix a few things, build a few more, and maybe go out with his friends into the Muggle world where he wouldn't be immediately mobbed on occasion. He'd had enough of adventure for the time being and wanted to finally let a bit of boredom set in before he went out and found an adventure that was more to his liking than the last several he'd been on.

The only thing that had allowed him to survive thus far was a little bit of speed and dexterity and a whole lot of luck. If he hadn't run back through that chess set and back again at the first sign of trouble from Quirrel, or run the Basilisk into a knot around that pillar, or run into himself coming and going, or any other number of things, he'd be dead several times over by now.

"If you don't do it, aside from the potentially world-ending paradox, there's the fact that Voldemort will get his hands on a powerful artifact which can cause an incalculable amount of damage nearly a decade before his first defeat." the Unspeakable said, pulling him out of his dark musings on what for him had been something of a seven-year war against Voldemort.

"Fine." Harry sighed, knowing that once again there had been no choice. For him, it was quite possible that the war with Voldemort would never end.

"The world thanks you Harry." the Unspeakable said not unkindly.

"Just let me get ready first. I've got to pack, and I've got a letter which will need to be sent to my friends after I leave to write." Harry said as he scooted out from under the table.

"Why don't you just tell your friends?" the Unspeakable asked.

"Because they'd try to go with me if I did." Harry said. "They'd follow me to the very gates of Hell, heck they'd follow me into Hell if I so much as mentioned wanting to bother Voldemort in the afterlife for the fun of it."

"I see." the Unspeakable said, sounding rather amused. "Your father tends to gather such friends to him himself."

Scowling at the mention of the man or whatever he was who had broken James Potter's trust, Harry turned towards his room to grab a few things he thought he might need. Even if the Unspeakable hadn't mentioned the world-ending paradox or the possibility of Voldemort winning, he might've gone anyways in order to keep the artifact he was being sent after out of the wrong hands. He'd had that "Saving people thing" since even before he'd been - unknown to himself - adopted by the Doctor. The reason he'd chosen the Harrowgates after all had been because when he'd landed, Wilhelmena who hadn't gotten over the loss of her only son a year earlier had been reaching for a bottle of sleeping pills.

"A meteor rock?!" Harry exclaimed as he stood in a ritual circle in the bowels of the Department of Mysteries two days later while the Unspeakables gave him some last-minute instructions. "I'm looking for a meteor rock?!"


	3. Coulda Smacked Him With a Trout

"Come on Bessie, I know you can be more cooperative than that." The Doctor said as he worked on a modification to the frame of the antique on wheels which would enable the vehicle which was never meant to travel at more than thirty miles an hour to handily survive sustained travel at over ninety, even in rough conditions. The yellow roadster, being non-sentient, made no reply, though it almost seemed as if the repair work became more difficult after that out of a perverse desire on the part of the vehicle to screw with the Doctor who'd modified it so many times that about the only thing that was original to the car was the horn and maybe the headlights, and even those were questionable.

Outside of the garage where the Doctor was tinkering with one of the conditions of his employment, everyone was getting on with the work they generally did when not engaged in battles with aliens, mutated monsters, lizard people from the dawn of time, and corporations bent on world conquest i.e. preparing for the latest peace conference, doing intelligence work that had more to do with Soviet Russia than outer-space, trying to figure out why almost nobody remembered the Mars landings despite the fact that they had taken place less than a year before, and trying to figure out why the hell the Cold War was back on again when they'd been pretty damn sure it was off and had already made some statements to that effect which now made them look rather stupid.

All in all, it seemed to be shaping up into being one of those all-too-frequent ordinary days where everyone either tried to enjoy the silence while it lasted or went around with the air of one who was waiting for the other shoe to drop, flinching at every loud noise and examining strangers a little more carefully in case they might be the Master in a mask dropping by to cause trouble for the Doctor and raid the canteen while he was at it just because he could. Considering how often the felonious Time Lord's insane Earth-based plots had failed and how Jo had mentioned that the Master's worst fear seemed to be a maniacally laughing Doctor, rumor was going around that the Master wasn't so much bent on World Conquest as on keeping the Doctor busy so he didn't take a dive off the deep end, which was part of the reason the Master kept escaping U.N.I.T. custody alive.

The main part of the reason the Master escaped so handily was that he was actually that smart, but there were those who were somewhat hesitant to start shooting out of fear of what the Doctor's reaction might be. The Doctor was helping for now, but those who had unexpectedly run headfirst into the fact that the Doctor wasn't human be it through witnessing an act of inhuman strength or speed or through a moment of utter incomprehension on one or both parts knew that could change in the blink of an eye since the only loyalties he had to the human species were in the ties he created. That was also part of the reason Sergeant Benton and Captain Yates dealt with him so often, since he seemed to get along with them better than most of the other soldiers who'd been run through his lab.

As a young Private who'd been loaned to U.N.I.T. whose official function had something to do with international events hosted by the United Nations and the providing of security thereof and whose off the books purview had more to do with anything weird including witches ruefully noted that the day was a perfect one for a game of football, there was a bright light, a window shattering bang, and a small exclamation of "I'm never doing that again! That was worse than when I apparated to Switzerland last week.". When the spots cleared from the eyes of the Private who'd been doing sentry duty, he saw a small messy-haired boy in turn-of-the-century clothing who was holding an old-fashioned rucksack. The boy looked up at him looking down at him, looked slightly embarrassed when he realized that the Private was staring more at his outlandish outfit than anything else, gestured to his clothing and said "To be honest, I thought I would be landing _elsewhere _where this was still fashionable, seeing as _They _told me they'd be sending me somewhere I could get help, and the help I need...".

Having been informed that any strange happenings that occurred in front of him were above his pay-grade unless ordered otherwise, the Private mentally scrabbled to find which department he should report this incident to, seeing as such things usually fell to one of U.N.I.T.'s two special advisors to deal with, with or without the help of U.N.I.T.'s military might. A human child appearing out of nowhere appeared to be something that should be delivered to the door with a broom on it that most definitely wasn't a broom cupboard, but then again, it could be another alien incursion that had taken a seemingly innocuous form. Before the Private could make the decision regarding which section of the ladder to kick this pint-sized problem up to, both the Doctor and the chap that nobody was supposed to talk about came running.

Despite being in excellent shape, the chap that nobody was supposed to talk about trailed after the grease stained Doctor who was still wearing a blue overall rather than his usual frilly attire by a wide margin. That was until the Doctor caught sight of the boy who was standing in front of the Private, and abruptly froze in place with an expression on his face that was akin to one a man might wear if somebody suddenly dumped a load of Salmon on his desk and asked him to make Cheeseburgers. While he just stood there, the chap that nobody was supposed to talk about caught up to him, overtook him, and passed him, only stopping when he reached the boy who was standing in front of the Private. Muttering a few words in a language that seemed to be a bastardized form of Latin, the chap that nobody was supposed to talk about tapped the boy on the head with a stick that the Private pretended not to notice, it being above his pay-grade and all.

"Damn, and I thought I'd actually get a case today." the chap that nobody was supposed to talk about who was also known as U.N.I.T.'s Magical Advisor and known to his friends as Richard Wainright and to his enemies as "That damn Muggleborn" muttered. "The Doctor will be the one seeing action while I sit languishing in my office sorting out Diagon Alley chatter looking for signs of 'troublesome elements' yet again."

Turning away from the small boy in short trousers, U.N.I.T.'s Magical Advisor passed the Doctor who was standing there looking slightly like a landed fish a second time on his way back into the building to return to the job that was his bread and butter and would be called Anti-Terrorist Operations (Magical) in a future generation when funding increased and it jumped to a higher pay scale. Basically what he was doing was searching audio from a number of discreetly placed monitoring spells for certain key words that might indicate trouble that could spill into the Muggle world and cause the sort of problems nobody needed, least of all U.N.I.T. which was also tasked with helping keep the hidden Magical world just that, hidden.

Finally, whatever it was that had caused the Doctor's brain to hit the Blue Screen of Death slowly cleared and the Doctor moved forward looking as if he were cautiously approaching a landmine. Strangely, as he watched the Doctor approach the boy, the Private was reminded of the time his brother had found out that his girlfriend was pregnant. The boy watched the Doctor approach, looking as if he wasn't quite sure what the man's problem was, but was willing to accommodate the crazy person for now since he didn't have anything better to do at the moment.

Eventually, the Doctor reached the small boy and knelt down until he was level with him the way one would when approaching a cat or a particularly skittish dog. Rather than extending a hand for the boy to sniff as one would had the boy been a domesticated animal commonly kept as a pet, the Doctor reached a hand out, slowly put it on the boy's shoulder, pulled him forward towards him, and then lightly sniffed the boy's hair.

"Definitely mine." the Doctor muttered as he held the boy who looked like he was about to bolt in place. "The predominant scent is _His_, but definitely mine."

Figuring that there were probably elements to Time Lord reproduction that he most definitely didn't want to know about, the Private did his best to erase that last statement from his memory and focus on the fact that what appeared to be the Doctor's son had turned up on U.N.I.T.'s doorstep, which would be gossip for the ages. As far as the Private was concerned, the fact that the kid had black hair was just a coincidence, and it was going to stay that way no matter which paths his mind tried to rove down as the word "Master" futilely tried to pop up.

After several failed escape attempts, the boy seemed to realize that resistance was futile and that the Doctor who was slotting the existence of his son into his world wasn't going to let go any time soon.

"You wouldn't happen to know anything about meteor rocks would you?" the boy asked as the Doctor picked him up and carried him back towards the building and presumably the lab he seemed to have claimed as both his workspace and his private residence.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note: <strong>Before anyone comments, despite the conclusion that the Private skydove to to hopefully humorous effect, I wasn't actually suggesting that Harry was the Doctor and the Master's son. The "His" in this case is the Second Doctor, working on the theory that while the Doctor would have a common base scent that identified him, each Doctor would have an individual overscent that carried the base scent as well as certain identifying information. As the Doctor's "offspring" due to the rather unusual adoption, the Second Doctor's scent became part of Harry's base scent which would carry familial information that the Doctor could identify much the way that the 11th Doctor was able to tell that River was Amy's child just by smelling them.


	4. Reflecting on Reflections

To those whose sense of smell was sensitive enough, everyone's scent carried a complex packet of information. Family, age, general health status, and what the individual tended to eat, wash with, stay near or brush up against were a given. For a Time Lord, there was a subtle nuance that marked each regeneration as being different from the previous, even if that Time Lord took troubles to stay as much the same as possible in character and appearance. That subtle hint of burnt electronics that clung to the Doctor who was carrying Harry indoors wasn't entirely due to the fact that his projects had a tendency to blow up in his face apparently in order to spite him, much the way the scent of the TARDIS's internal atmosphere that was pervasively woven into his previous self's scent wasn't entirely due to time spent there, and the faint sugar smell that clung to his next self wasn't entirely due to his habit of snacking on candy rather than eating actual meals. Each of these overscents, much like the overscents of other Time Lords seemed to be tied to some sort of character aspect, creating the theory that these scents were actually psychic impressions rather than something with an actual physical base. For the Doctor's second self who'd regenerated right next to the console, the TARDIS had truly become home for the first time, and so on and so forth.

Harry, who was raised by beings with much more limited senses and was picking things up as he went along, knew none of this. All he knew when he finally calmed down long enough to process the Doctor's scent was that the man smelled very familiar. He was somewhat puzzled about the way the man had talked about him being his, seeing as he looked nothing like the man and all descriptions he'd received of his real father had been of a short man with dark hair.

Admittedly, the man did look a bit like...

_The small boy curiously studied the mirror that someone had clumsily attempted to lead him to for a complex set of reasons he couldn't even begin to decypher, though there was a heavy tinge of guilt laced throughout. Looking up at the inscription that ran across the top of the frame, his mind automatically translated the oddly spaced mirror writing before going off on a tangent that involved Leonardo DaVinci. Wondering exactly what his heart's desire was, he peered cautiously at the mirror's surface._

_His reflection was surrounded. There were hundreds of people standing behind him, all trying to get his attention. In the row directly behind him were seven individuals, two of whom he knew seeing as they were his parents Lily and James, two of whom didn't look remotely human, two of whom looked familiar and filled him with an aching sense of loss, and one individual with constantly shifting features seemed to stand alone. Standing behind the shifting man were hundreds upon hundreds of constantly shifting individuals in robes he'd seen no wizard wear who looked down at him with expressions of bemusement, amusement, anger, love, and disgust, sometimes all from the same individual. As the strangers shifted, he caught sight of one feature or another that seemed to be in common with the shifting man at the head of their group. _

For an instant or two during each cycle, the constantly shifting man who had stood alone had looked exactly like the man who was carrying him inside what looked like it might be a military base considering the number of soldiers who were mucking about. The curly and somewhat fluffy hair on his head which was going white had been on a couple of the constantly changing individuals who'd stood behind the shifting man. Several individuals had also briefly shared his tall stature, and the large nose that didn't quite remind him of Professor Snape's.

He'd always wondered exactly what that image he'd gone back to study several times, noting certain commonalities amongst the groups who stood behind each individual in the first row behind him, had meant and now the final pieces were clicking into place. Aside from the groups behind the obviously non-human individuals, each group looked like they may have been...

Another image flashed before Harry's eyes. The shifting man standing short, dark-haired, blue-eyed, and decidedly rumpled looking.

Each group had looked like they may have been related to the individual they stood behind.

The man who was carrying him was the bastard who'd seduced his mother, completely betraying his friend James Potter's trust in the process, setting his parents to arguing for months about something he'd only understood later. Though why the man's features had changed so completely between now and then, he didn't know. Considering the view of his possible ancestors that he'd received during his first year at Hogwarts which may or may not have been a fabrication that had been created from his subconscious, it was entirely possible that it was a natural trait of his father's species, and one day he too might wake up to discover that the only thing he had in common with his previous appearance was the fact that he looked human. If one didn't look too closely and notice that there was something just a bit off about the eyes, the teeth, the fingernails, the toenails, and the texture of the hair that was.

It took Harry under three seconds to process all of this and come to the revelation that the man who was carrying him was in fact his father and therefore not to be completely trusted, despite the awe the Unspeakables he'd encountered prior to his departure had held the Doctor in. Three seconds during which a certain young Private stood staring after the Doctor looking completely gobsmacked. Three seconds during which a certain wizard got that much closer to his office and the tedium it represented to him. Three seconds during which a certain Brigadier who left the building as quickly as his advisors had caught up to the Doctor.

"What have you got there Doctor?" the Brigadier asked as he took in the oddly dressed boy in the Doctor's arms, briefly noting that the messy dark hair that graced the boy's head looked familiar.

"My son." The Doctor replied with a casualness he wasn't feeling, seeing as he'd never really expected to see the child again after he'd handed it over to the Potters, and he especially hadn't expected to see him here and now nearly a decade before he was born. Now that the kid was here though, he was going to have to face the consequences of his exceedingly rash actions since there was no way in hell he'd leave the small boy to wander about on his own.

"Dear Lord!"


	5. A Matter of Principle

When he reached his lab and set the boy who was biologically his and therefore his responsibility down in order to retrieve the key to his TARDIS which he was using as a residence since it currently wasn't good for anything else, the boy gave him that dark and baleful look he used to be so good at giving back in the days when he'd been a childish, impetuous fool. From the looks of things, he and this son wouldn't be getting along. That was pretty much par for the course when it came to his children. It was the grandkids he'd gotten along with. Well, Susan at least.

Sighing, he retrieved his key and opened the door to the TARDIS, ushering the boy inside and trying to remember where that nursery Susan found was. Since it seemed to be well stocked, the boy would be happier in there. The boy continued scowling at him as he trailed behind him through the corridors of the TARDIS. Eventually, a mental nudge sent him going down a seemingly random corridor near the seldom used kitchens and, after opening the third door down he found himself looking into a room that was painted the same soft silver as a forest canopy under a midday springtime sun. Just looking at the shining walls reminded him of hikes he had taken in his youth.

"You can stay in here." he told his son after a visual examination of the room found it and its furnishings suitable, if a little utilitarian for a nursery. "I'm sure you'll be capable of behaving until I return."

With that, he turned and left to explain things to the Brigadier who was undoubtedly already in the lab waiting for him to show so he could barrage him with questions. The sooner he got it over with, the sooner it would be done, and he could have a proper discussion with his son. A discussion he was sure would be a long one, considering the boy who he estimated couldn't be older than twenty definitely wasn't where he was supposed to be.

* * *

><p>After his cheating bastard of a father left, Harry scowled as he wandered around the room he'd been dumped in and examined his surroundings. The cold metallic walls and the strange furniture that looked like it had been made out of brightly colored molded plastic did nothing to endear him to his new environment. Continuing to scowl at his surroundings which were a prime example of how NOT to decorate a room, he made a small angry noise as he kicked a fugly pink trunk that was resting against the wall furthest from the door.<p>

The instant after he'd kicked the trunk, a hologram of a strangely dressed man with a large face and some rather unusual facial hair appeared and said "Rassilon says: Go stand in the corner!" as he pointed to the corner diagonally across from the bed which was located on the same wall as the door, albeit at the opposite end of the wall from the door.

Staring at the bizarre figure in incredulity, he stood right where he was.

"Rassilon says: This is your final warning. Go stand in the corner." the hologram of someone who was presumably Rassilon said.

Laughing as he wondered who the hell came up with such a stupid method of discipline as the "Rassilon says" guy, he continued to stand there.

Faster than he could blink, the hologram appeared right in front of him and jabbed him in the arm. Rather than feeling nothing but air as the hologram went through him like a ghost as he'd expected it to do, he felt a sharp stinging shock where the "Rassilon says" guy had jabbed him.

"Ow!" he exclaimed as he rubbed his arm where he'd been shocked.

"Rassilon says: Do not disobey Rassilon." the hologram said.

Scowling once more, he chose to refuse to be bullied by the "Rassilon says" guy and stand his ground instead. Some people would accuse him of being a masochist, since he had a tendency to do things like this, but when it came to matters of principle, he could be a very stubborn bastard. Disobeying the "Rassilon says" guy had just become a matter of principle. He wasn't about to let himself be bullied around by a child-abusing hologram. Especially not one that belonged to his bastard of a father.

"Rassilon says: Do not disobey Rassilon."

"Ow!"

* * *

><p>Rather than looking like he was bursting with curiosity when the Doctor found him waiting in his lab, the Brigadier looked like he was waiting to get an unpleasant discussion out of the way. The Brigadier's eyes were a bit dark as he studied him, as if he were looking for something. Honestly, it looked as if the Brigadier fully expected him to lie to him about whatever they were going to talk about.<p>

"Your son is Zoe's, isn't he?" the Brigadier finally asked, breaking the silence.

"Why would you ask something like that?" he asked with a frown, wondering exactly what would make the Brigadier think he'd had a child with Zoe. From the looks of things, the man seriously considered it to be a possibility.

"You two were closer than...And, well, you'd put your hands on her in places that could be construed as being inappropriate. I didn't really think anything of it at the time, but your flirting with Miss Shaw when you first met seems to suggest that you might've been more aware of what you'd been doing than I'd previously believed."

"Ah, that..." he started, wondering what he could say that wouldn't dig a hole for him, even though he was completely innocent in the matter of which he'd been accused.

He was aware of a few incidents where his hands had ended up places that looked more inappropriate than they normally would've because Zoe's clothing tended to be a bit...provocative. Usually, things like that had happened either when they'd ended up tangled in a heap with Jamie, or when he was pushing or pulling Zoe either in order to get her to go faster or to get her out of the way of danger during one of their adventures, but even putting a hand on her shoulder while she was wearing that catsuit looked...Well...

With Victoria, such things didn't get noticed as much since she was usually far more conservatively dressed than Zoe, and it had been very obvious that Victoria and Jamie were an item. Not so with Zoe with whom Jamie frequently argued. That, and Zoe did seem to get along with him better than she did with Jamie on the surface.

He understood why the Brigadier would find even the idea of him and Zoe having a child together disturbing. It wasn't the whole alien on human thing. It was the fact that when he'd met Zoe, she'd been fifteen and when they'd parted ways, she'd been seventeen, and throughout that time, he'd looked to be in his late forties, though he was even older. A century ago, such a union would've been met with a frown and some nasty comments, but little more. Now, it would've been met with extreme distaste, and possibly a police inquiry and an arrest. Twenty or more years from now - now being 1971 at this point - it would be met with a police inquiry and an arrest which comes with registry as a sex offender, with the neighbors vandalizing his house and possibly burning it being a distinct possibility.

He hadn't touched Zoe _that_ way though. She'd been something of a surrogate daughter, or granddaughter to him, and he wasn't into incest, real or in that vague "Not blood, but..." sense. That, and he'd somewhat suspected that Zoe Heriot had been a bit more interested in batting for the opposite team, if she was even interested at all.

Realizing that his silence looked to the Brigadier as if he was stalling, and might cement his "guilt" in the other man's mind, he formulated a reply, starting with an explanation for one of the reasons he'd been "flirting" with Liz Shaw. Considering how over the top he'd been, he was reasonably certain that Dr. Shaw knew he'd been joking around with her that day.

"Being a woman in her profession in this day and age, Liz Shaw generally expects to be flirted with and/or sexually harassed by her male colleagues, and is used to working around it." he said. "If I hadn't behaved as expected, her work might've suffered due to the fact that she'd be constantly distracted by trying to figure out why I was behaving outside the norm. So, I gave her what she expected in a manner that let her know that she won't have to worry about outright sexual harassment from me."

"That explains Miss Shaw, but you still haven't answered my question." the Brigadier said, fixing him with a look that had absolutely none of its usual warmth.

"I was just getting to that." he replied. "And, no Zoe is not Harry's mother. Aside from the fact that she may have been completely asexual, I wasn't interested in her in that manner, and she didn't seem all that interested in me by the way you measure such things. Harry was, for lack of a better word, adopted. Since he was young enough, the genetic modification that gave him half of my DNA took and remained stable."

"Genetic modification?!" the Brigadier exclaimed.

Based on the Brigadier's thunderous expression, it would seem that he'd just opened an entirely different can of worms...

* * *

><p>Scowling, Harry stood firm, refusing to move from his spot. The shocks stung, and he'd received over twenty of them, but he was going to continue to stand his ground.<p>

"Rassilon Says: Continued noncompliance will result in the disciplinary charge being raised to Level 2."


	6. Rassilon Says

The Doctor sighed as he re-entered the TARDIS. His ears were still ringing after the earful he'd received from the Brigadier over the manner in which he'd adopted Harry. He hadn't been able to get a word of explanation in edgewise until the Brigadier had paused to take a deep breath several minutes in. His quick "Harrywould'vediedotherwise!" had caused the Brigadier to pause long enough for him to continue to the point that he'd stepped in it once again. Apparently, the Brigadier had taken exception to his previously completely hands off method of raising Harry which he'd loudly and angrily referred to as "foisting the child off on a pair of unsuspecting humans".

Suffice to say, the discussion had not gone well, and the Brigadier was angry with him for reasons that it was likely only a human would understand.

After swallowing a pain-killer to deal with the incipient headache that had been caused by the fallout of the arrival of the son which he previously thought he wouldn't have to deal with until the boy hit puberty and everything that came with it due to the longer lifespans of his adoptive mother and her husband, he headed to the nursery to speak to said son. When he got there, it was to find one of the old Rassilon programs punishing the child who was barely standing.

By the looks of things, the hologram was set on Dicipline Level 3.

How the hell the thing reached that high a setting so quickly, he had no idea. It had taken him until he was seventy before he warranted being punished with a level 2 setting, and he'd been an unusually unruly child during his youth.

"Deactivate!" he yelled as the hologram announced that it was raising the punishment level to level 4, which was a level that purportedly resulted in Regeneration. Nobody, but Nobody had ever made it to Level 4 during their youth. Not even the Master.

Running forward, he caught the boy who was now collapsing to the floor now that there was nothing to resist. The boy growled low in his throat and looked up at him with cold green eyes that soon shut as he lost his fight with consciousness.

"Great." the Doctor muttered, briefly worried about what the fact that for a moment he was more concerned about the Brigadier's reaction to this than the boy's condition said about him.

"Not even I was this much trouble," the Doctor said as he carried the unconscious Time Lord/Tenza/Human hybrid to the TARDIS's medical bay to be seen to.

* * *

><p>Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart found himself wondering if he'd been too hard on the Doctor as he called together a meeting of the base's command staff who were immediately beneath him in order to discuss the matter of the Doctor's son who would be staying with them for an indefinite period of time. He hadn't been having the best of days, and the matter had just compounded things.<p>

Having had a moment to think about things after the Doctor had dropped the bombshell that he was a parent with children young enough to be looked after rather than a grandfather with an empty alien nest, a certain nasty suspicion had niggled its way into his mind in regards to the child's maternity. It had been with the confrontational mindset that had been a result of said suspicion as well as the unexpected bomb that had been dropped with all of the calls and paperwork that would result from it that had sent him to face the Doctor spoiling for a fight.

Truth be told, aside from the queer green eyes, the boy had looked very much like a cross between what the Doctor used to look like before he transformed and Zoe Herriot in the glimps he'd gotten of him before the Doctor had stashed him away in the TARDIS that the Doctor was frittering money away trying to repair.

When the Doctor who had in fact been innocent of Statutory Rape and apparently hadn't been aware of potential improprieties on his part had mentioned genetic modification, he'd gone off on the man like he'd been itching to do from the start. When the Doctor had mentioned completely abandoning the boy to his adoptive mother and her husband without once checking up on him and having absolutely no idea what the boy had been up to since, he'd felt completely justified in his previous tirade and justified in launching another.

Afterwards, when he realized he knew nothing about Gallifreyan mating habits or how, when or even if their males were involved in the rearing of their offspring, he began to wonder if he had been wrong to go off on the man who had unexpectedly had his admittedly adopted offspring dropped in his lap due to unexpected circumstances. There was also the fact that the boy would've died if the Doctor hadn't adopted him...

When the Doctor had arrived late to the meeting without the boy he had planned to introduce to those who were in charge of the day to day operations which would be affected by the child's presence in tow, he immediately knew something was wrong.

"Doctor, where is your son?" he asked.

The Gallifreyan equivalent of a flinch, which he'd learned to discern over his acquaintance with the Doctor, confirmed his suspicions. Something had indeed gone wrong.

"There was an incident with the disciplinary program in the nursery," the Doctor said, sounding as if he was trying to minimalize his involvement in yet another lab explosion that had been entirely his fault. "Harry needs some medical attention, but he will soon make a full recovery."

"Medical attention!" the Brigadier exclaimed before drawing in a sharp breath.

No, he had indeed not been too hard on the Doctor. He'd gone too lightly. It was clear that the alien had absolutely no idea how to deal with children, was clearly incapable of taking care of them, and was in fact a serious threat to their continued health and well-being. A fact that should've been obvious from the start, considering the fact that he had been there when the Doctor had dragged two different teenaged girls into potentially deadly danger right in front of him.

"Doctor," he said, his voice deadly calm since he was so furious that he'd come out on the other side of anger. "You will hand the boy over, and any and all visitation you have with the child will be heavily supervised and will immediately be curtailed if it is deemed that you have become a further danger to his health either physically or mentally. Noncompliance will result in your arrest and a complete loss of privileges."

The Doctor got that look he did when he was going to find some way to creatively interpret his orders if he didn't outright defy them.

"If you try to defy me on this Doctor," he said. "May I remind you that the child has been in your custody for less than two hours and he already needs medical attention because of your own negligence."

Making a strange growling noise deep in his throat that clearly indicated serious displeasure, the Doctor sharply whirled around and stalked out of the room like a large angry predator in human skin. Watching this intentionally intimidating display, the Brigadier was once again reminded of the fact that the Doctor was only friendly for as long as he chose to be. This incident would seriously damage the relationship UNIT had with the Doctor and could potentially turn the man who was trapped on their world as much by his own choice to follow his own ethical code which prevented him from overpowering the Master and stealing his TARDIS as he was by his own people unfriendly but, considering the fact that a child's life potentially hung in the balance, so be it.

* * *

><p>The Master listened to the chatter coming out of the UNIT base where the Doctor chose to reside. Apparently, the Doctor had rather stupidly reproduced once again. Why the Doctor kept doing that despite the fact that his children tended to resent him and push him out of their lives at the first available opportunity, he didn't know.<p>

Of course the Doctor's children had had good reason to resent him. While the Doctor had behaved somewhat like a proper Time Lord during his marriage, there was the little fact that the Doctor who completely adored children had a hard time telling the difference between Adventure and Child Endangerment due to the scrapes he had gotten into when he was a child. He tended to think that the little outings he was taking his little ones on during their parent/child bonding time were the former. His children thought it was the latter, and attempted to avoid him like the plague during school breaks for fear that their father would drag them on another "Adventure".

The Master almost pitied the Doctor's new child. Almost.

* * *

><p><strong>Omake:<strong>

The recently resurrected Rassilon followed his host down a corridor.

"I'm deeply sorry, but there was an accident with the guest quarters that will take a while to be fixed. If you would be willing to spend the night, uh, here, your quarters will be ready by tomorrow morning." Rassilon's host said as he led the founder of Gallifreyan society to a well appointed nursery that had clearly seen generations of use.

Scowling, Rassilon entered the nursery and resigned himself to one uncomfortable night in exchange for several more comfortable ones which would be happening when the emergency renovations that his host didn't know he knew about were complete. He cared not one whit that these renovations were practically bankrupting his host who was making sure the guest quarters that were being prepared contained every luxury that could be obtained on Gallifrey.

Rassilon swore as he tripped over a toy that had been left out by the child of his host who was currently staying with friends while he walked over to the trundle bed on the far side of the nursery.

As he called the species of his host's ancestors into question, a hologram of his previous self appeared in front of him.

"Rassilon says: Swearing results in immediate corporal punishment." the hologram that looked rather ridiculous compared to Rassilon's current form, especially with that massive beard, said as it approached Rassilon and poked him in the arm, giving him a light stinging shock.

Rassilon's eyes narrowed as he faced the image of his previous self, the form he had inhabited as he had slept through the millennia before being reawoken in his current form.

It was** so **on.


End file.
